I remember her. I remember her as a little baby, watching her when the women were cooking or cleaning. I was the only man who held her, because her daddy, Deeber, was dead. I killed him. He was the first. He took my momma from me, and so I erased him from the world in retaliation. I didn’t know then that my momma’s sister was pregnant by him. I just knew, although there was no proof, that he had hurt my momma so badly that she had died and that he would hurt me in the same way when his chance came. So I killed him, and his daughter grew up without a father. He was a base man with base appetites, hungers that he might have sated on her as the years went on, but she never got to see him or to understand the kind of man that he was. There were always questions for her, lingering doubts, and once she began to guess the truth of what had happened, I was far from her. I disappeared into the forest one day when she was still a child, and chose my own path. I drifted away from her, and from the others, and I did not know of what had befallen her until it was too late.

That is what I tell myself: I did not know.

Then our paths crossed in this city, and I tried to make up for my failings, but I could not. They were too grievous, and they could not be undone. And now she is dead, and I find myself wondering: Did I do this? Did I set this in motion by quietly, calmly deciding to take the life of her father before she was born? In a sense, were we not both father to the woman she became? Do I not bear responsibility for her life, and for her death? She was blood to me, and she is gone, and I am lessened by her passing from this world.

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

And I turned away from him as he lowered his head, because I did not want to see him this way.

I spent the rest of the night, and a good part of the morning, being interviewed by the NYPD in the Nine-Six over on Meserole Avenue. As an ex-cop, even one with some unanswered questions surrounding him, my stock had some value. I told them that I was given a lead on the Mexican’s apartment by a source, and had found the door to the warehouse open. I entered, saw what the apartment contained, and was about to call the police when I was attacked. In defending myself, I had killed my attacker.

Two detectives interviewed me, a blond woman named Bayard and her partner, a big red-haired cop named Entwistle. They were scrupulously polite to start with, due in no small part to the fact that seated to my right was Frances Neagley. Before I arrived in New York, Louis had arranged for a nominal fee to be paid into my account by the firm of Early, Chaplin amp; Cohen, with whom Frances was a senior partner. Officially, I was in her employ, and therefore could claim privilege if any awkward questions were asked. Frances was tall, impeccably groomed even after my early call, and superficially charming, but she hung out in the kinds of bars where blood dried on the floor at weekends and had a reputation for stonewalling so hard that she made titanium seem pliable by comparison. She had already done a good job of simultaneously distracting and frightening most of the cops with whom she was coming into contact.

“Who tipped you off on Garcia?” asked Entwistle.

“Was that his name?”

“Seems so. He’s not in a position to confirm it right now.”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

Bayard glanced at her notes.

“It wouldn’t be a pimp named Tyrone Baylee, would it, aka G-Mack?”

I didn’t reply.

“The woman you were hired to find was part of his stable, right? I assume you spoke to him. I mean, it would make no sense not to speak to him if you were looking for her, right?”

“I spoke to a lot of people,” I said.

Frances intervened. “Where are you going with this, Detective?”

“I’d just like to know when Mr. Parker here last spoke to Tyrone Baylee.”

“Mr. Parker has neither confirmed nor denied that he ever spoke to this man, so the question is irrelevant.”

“Not to Mr. Baylee,” said Entwistle. He had yellowed fingers, and his voice rumbled with catarrh. “He was admitted to Woodhull early this morning with gunshot wounds to his right hand and right foot. He had to crawl to get there. Any hopes he ever had of pitching for the Yankees are pretty much gone.”

I closed my eyes. Louis hadn’t seen fit to mention the fact that he had visited a little retribution on G-Mack.

“I spoke to Baylee around midnight, 1 A.M.,” I said. “He gave me the address in Williamsburg.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“Did he tell you that I shot him?”

“He’s all doped up. We’re waiting to hear what he has to say.”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

“You wouldn’t know who did?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Again, Frances interjected.

“Detective? Can we move on?”

“Sorry, but your client, or your employee, or whatever you choose to call him, seems to be bad for the health of the people he meets.”

“So,” said Frances, her tone one of perfect reasonableness, “either slap a health warning on him and let him go, or charge him.”

I had to admire Frances’s fighting talk, but goading these cops didn’t seem like a great idea with Garcia’s body still cooling, G-Mack recovering from bullet wounds, and the shadow of the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center looming over my future sleeping arrangements.

“Mr. Parker killed a man,” said Entwistle.

“A man who was trying to kill him.”

“So he says.”

“Come on, Detective, we’re going around in circles here. Let’s be adult about this. You have a room torn up by shotgun blasts; a crumbling warehouse filled with bones, some of which may prove to be the remains of the woman Mr. Parker was hired to find; and two VCR tapes that appear to contain images of at least one woman being killed, and probably others. My client has indicated that he will cooperate with the investigation in any way that he can, and you’re spending your time trying to trip him up with questions about an individual who suffered injuries subsequent to his meeting with my client. Mr. Parker is available for further questions at any time, or to answer any charges that may be pressed at a future date. So what’s it going to be?”

Entwistle and Bayard exchanged a look, then excused themselves. They were gone for a long time. Frances and I sat in silence until they returned.

“You can go,” said Entwistle. “For now. If it’s not too much trouble, we’d appreciate it if you let us know if you plan on leaving the state.”

Frances began gathering her notes.

“Oh,” added Entwistle. “And try not to shoot anyone for a while, huh? See how you like it. It might even take.”

Frances dropped me back at my car. She didn’t ask me anything further about the events of the night before, and I didn’t offer. We both seemed happier that way.

“I think you’re okay,” she said, as we pulled up close by the warehouse. There were still cops outside, and curious onlookers kept vigil with the TV crews and assorted other reporters. “The man you killed got off three or four rounds for your one, and if the bones in the warehouse are tied in to him, then nobody is going to come chasing you in connection with his death, especially if the remains you found in the wall turn out to be those of Alice. They may decide to go after you for discharging a weapon, but when it comes to PIs, that’s a judgment call. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

I had retained a license to carry concealed in New York ever since I left the force, and it was probably the best $170 I spent every two years. The license was issued at the discretion of the commissioner, and in theory he could have denied my application for renewal, but nobody had ever raised an objection. I suppose that it was a lot to ask for them to let me go around shooting the gun as well.

I thanked Frances and got out of the car.